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May 29 - August 6, 2024
Martin had a bigger brain than most,
How could he, a sinner, address the Judge?
Allowing Luther such freedom with a Bible was a move Rome would soon profoundly regret,
but a summons to an academic disputation.
In the ninety-five theses, Luther was being a good Catholic.
saying that he could understand Scripture without the pope, even against the pope.
a disciple of the ‘damned and pestiferous’ heretics John Wycliffe and Jan Hus.
In that case, the reign of the antichrist there was sealed, and it was no longer the church of God but the synagogue of Satan.
Only when you admit you are worthy of hell can you be ready for heaven. This was salvation, not by trusting God’s promise of salvation, but by accepting his damnation. It was salvation by humility.
now, the question was, would the sinner trust God’s promise?
forgiveness comes simply by receiving the promise of God.
Thus the sinner’s hope is found, not in himself, but outside himself, in God’s word of promise.
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Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously,
certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, ‘As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!’ Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the
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Here now was a God who does not want our goodness but our trust.
he wrote in the people’s German, so that ordinary folk, and not just the scholars, could understand his gospel.
if the Bible and not the pope is to be believed, then there are only two sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), not seven, as Rome argued.
She was and is a wicked harlot through and through. However, when the king made his marriage vow, her status changed. Thus she is, simultaneously, a prostitute at heart and a queen by status. In just the same way, Luther saw that the sinner, on accepting Christ’s promise in the gospel, is simultaneously a sinner at heart and righteous by status. What has happened is the ‘joyful exchange’ in which all that she has (her sin) she gives to him, and all that he has (his righteousness, blessedness, life and glory) he gives to her. Thus she can confidently display ‘her sins in the face of death and
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symptoms of the real problem: unbelief.
The sinner could therefore be described as ‘the man curved in on himself’, or ‘the man who looks to himself’, for sin is not looking to Christ in trust, but looking to oneself.
Luther discovered as ‘justification by God’s word’ instead of ‘justification by faith’, because it is God’s word that justifies here, not our faith. Faith, thought Luther, is not some inner resource we must summon up; if it were, it would by his definition be sin! For him, the question ‘Have I got enough faith?’ completely misunderstands what faith is, by looking to and so relying on itself, rather than Christ. Faith is a passive thing, simply accepting, receiving, believing Christ—taking God seriously in what he promises in the gospel.
It is the object of faith that saves, namely Christ, and not the strength. Like a parachute, there are those who put it on and love it, understand it, and don't doubt its ability to save. But there are also those who put it on and are fearful and doubt that it will work. At the end of the day, when the plane crashes, both will be saved based on the parachute's effectiveness and not based on their feelings.
From that moment, Luther faced the wrath of the emperor, the pope, burning at the stake and the prospect of hell ever after if he was wrong. It is testimony to the transformatory power of his gospel-discovery that the once frightened monk in the thunderstorm would now stare them all down with the immovable affirmation ‘Here I stand!’
he managed to translate Erasmus’ Greek New Testament into German.
No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small?
‘My temptation is this, that I think I don’t have a gracious God.’
‘But if that is not enough for you, Devil, I have also shit and pissed; wipe your mouth on that and take a hearty bite.’
Luther held satanically inspired doubt as something to be excreted, rejected, risen above and derided with laughter. It was too subtle and tempting to be engaged head-on.
He knew that within himself there was only sin and doubt.
sought to persuade people with the Scriptures through simple, clear preaching.
He simply wanted to unleash the word of God, and let that do all the work.
‘In domestic affairs I defer to Katie. Otherwise I am led by the Holy Spirit.’
Quite simply, he could not understand that Luther placed all his certainty of salvation on Christ alone, and not on his own performance at all.
To him, Christianity was a matter of doctrine first and foremost, because true religion was first and foremost a matter of faith; and faith is correlative to truth.
for all we freely choose to do, we never naturally choose to please God, and therefore all our salvation must be God’s doing, not ours.
latter was an admission that he cannot and hence must rely on the all-sufficient grace of God that the moralizers implicitly denied.
Luther always emphasized that all the Scriptures are only ever about Christ, for it is only through faith in him that any could ever be saved.
in that they refused to acknowledge that their own Scriptures pointed them clearly to Christ.
that being children of Abraham was always a spiritual matter, not one of genetics; he then went on to show from the Old Testament that Jesus must be the promised Christ;
‘May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen.’
he inspires no moral self-improvement in would-be disciples; instead, his evident humanity testifies to a sinner’s absolute need for God’s grace.
jokingly ordered those with him to pray ‘for our Lord God and his gospel, that all might be well with him, for the Council of Trent and the accursed pope are very angry with him’. The joke had a serious point: his own death did not matter, for the gospel is God’s power for salvation and cannot be silenced by the death of a servant or the raging of an enemy.
‘Are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name?’ A clear ‘Yes’ was his answer. Soon after, he took his last breath. There was no priest present, there were no sacraments administered, and no last confession was made. Instead there was simple confidence before God. It was all testimony to how his teaching had changed things.
